[RESOLVED] show three random results

trehy2006

Hi,

I have a table with quite a few entries in it.
Part of the new layout of my homepage needs to call the entries to preview them.

How could I make it get all the ID's (field name: ID) and select three random ones?

What I have to preview them so far is:

<?php
$con = mysql_connect($server,$user,$pass);
if (!$con)
  {
  die('Could not connect: ' . mysql_error());
  }

mysql_select_db($db_name, $con);

$result = mysql_query("SELECT * FROM portfolio");

while($row = mysql_fetch_array($result))
  {
   echo "<center><h3>".$row['title']."</h3>";
   echo "<img height=\"100\" width=\"100\" src=\"".$row['image_path']."\" /><br />";

   //Limit number of words shown

   $description = substr($row['description'], 0, 99);

//End limit script
echo $description."...<br />"; 
echo "<div align=\"right\"><a href=\"portfolio.php?id=".$row['id']."\">Read more</a></div>";
echo "<p id=\"port_date\">Date of entry: ".$row['date']."</p>";




  echo "</center>";
  }

mysql_close($con);
?>

thanks in advance
TreColl

cahva

If you want to get 3 random results, the query would be like this:

$result = mysql_query("SELECT * FROM portfolio ORDER BY RAND() LIMIT 3");

Or do you really need to get all ID's and pick three of them? Then you should iterate the results and save those ids in an array and you can use for example array_rand() function.

trehy2006

No, thanks that should work

bradgrafelman

cahva wrote:
If you want to get 3 random results, the query would be like this:
$result = mysql_query("SELECT * FROM portfolio ORDER BY RAND() LIMIT 3");

Except that that query falls under the common "ORDER BY RAND()" pitfall... see the sticky in this forum for more info.

cahva

Never had to work on a table with millions of records so I havent had that performance issue myself 🙂

That thread is quite new. I wonder why this issue has come up just now and not years ago..